


this was my destiny, and in it was the voyage of my longing

by acupoftea



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Commander Shepard's Death, Gen, Mass Effect 2, Other, Pre-Mass Effect 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-09
Updated: 2017-08-09
Packaged: 2018-12-13 04:45:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11752296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acupoftea/pseuds/acupoftea
Summary: It was never meant to end like this, with ice instead of fire, an empty casket, Joker’s fists, Garrus’ turned back, Liara’s cold eyes, dog tags in the snow and so much more loss than gain, less pilgrimage more grounding, halting, a group rebuilt out of resentment and grief.(Post Mass Effect 1, Pre Mass Effect 2, a brief examination into the way I think each of the main members of the normandy crew would deal with their grief over Shepard dying.)





	this was my destiny, and in it was the voyage of my longing

**Author's Note:**

> The Mass Effect trilogy is one of my favourite fictional pieces of all time. I've had this sitting in my drafts for a long time, trying to rework it, because everything I've ever written for this series I've never felt does this series justice. I think I'll have to accept that I probably never will, and I've worked on this for so long I'm kinda giving up and just posting it. 
> 
> Also, I'd really appreciate feedback on this, not quite sure on the style so any thoughts about that would be welcome xx
> 
> (Also, title is taken from A Song Of Despair by Neruda)

He thinks this is how she felt, how she lived: he burns and cannot stop it. Joker can barely take ten steps and it’s less a symptom of his disability and more a condition of grief. He falls out of the pod gasping like he’s the one that died, back bent, body falling like a star over Alchera. The rest of it is a blur – it’s not until a broken hand later and an empty casket and six months down the track that he lifts his head up, feels something like hope that is much closer to desperation when he receives the offer from Cerberus. But for now, for that shudderingly long fall in the pod, bones fractured from all the movement, he burns. 

-

First it was Ash. Then it was Shepard. Guilt and grief settle into Kaidan’s bones, fester, the transition so quick that as soon as the shock passes he is reaching for Joker, glancing once up at the icy planet shadowing over them, before hauling his fist back. Joker doesn’t even flinch but Wrex grabs him by his collars, yanks him back, but the rage doesn’t simmer and it’s all he knows, all he will know for a long time. 

It’s only now he can think it, say it: it was in Liara’s blush and Garrus’ trailing eyes and his own – he loved her. He loved her and everything becomes blurred, it was red and a streak of mercy, a sharp smile that was unmissable, unbeatable, and unforgiveable – that she left all of them, that she didn’t come back. She never gave him – or anyone else on the Normandy for that matter – an indication that she had any romantic notions, but he still ached, for never telling her, for her loss, for Ash. For being the one that survived.

So even though he keeps his feet moving forward, one rank at a time through the alliance, even though he tries, Kaidan thinks – no he knows, he’ll never be better than he was on the Normady with it’s Commander. 

-

Wrex is quiet in the days after, deadly and unsettlingly quiet. The aftermath involves dragging as many of the crew as he can find to the citadel (Garrus and Tali and Kaidan – though he leaves early. Liara never makes any appearance) and passes around the ryncol, spends the time trying to ignore the silence that she would’ve filled. It ends up futile, and ‘fuck it’ is the thought he carries as the night wears on, and when he finally snaps. He climbs up onto the bar, roaring a toast to the impossible human woman – the one who had the nerve to win his respect and ultimately, his friendship, one of the only people, alien or krogan, whose never once backed down from him. Wrex drinks for her, to her, remembers the fortitude she carried and after a week he heads home, feeling warm and loud and more like himself for the first time since Alchera.

-

It takes some time. to accept it, to hold it, let it sit right in the core of him without lifting it, without wanting to, failing, trying, failing, trying, failing. His best friend dies and everything else that follows seems inevitable. Garrus quits c-sec, quits space, tries not to think of his mother or of anything at all, digs himself deep so he can find her, bury her himself. But her death is heavy – he doesn’t want it but she won’t let him go, a flash of those green eyes and a spark, a remarkability that made her death seem more impossible than defying it. Garrus looks back at his life and he sees a string of failures, of loss – everything that he was it seems like Shepard took with her, any potential or thought is overshadowed the way it was when he first stumbled out of that pod, Alchera looming over him the way she did once. Impossibly vast, impossibly real. Impossible for it to be over, impossible that he was the one left standing. 

-

Three days after the funeral and Tali’s back on the fleet. A pilgrimage that feels like it’s been completed five times over, that’s become so much more than just lines of data. It was never meant to end like this, with ice instead of fire, an empty casket, Joker’s fists, Garrus’ turned back, Liara’s cold eyes, dog tags in the snow and so much more loss than gain, less pilgrimage more grounding, halting, a group rebuilt out of resentment and grief. 

Three days after the funeral and Tali knows she’ll survive this, knows maybe her (former?) friends won’t. She considers the potential Shepard saw in her and for the first time knows it (the potential she saw in all of them, that piercing gaze that Shepard could cut through someone with – the way she gave and gave and never seemed weaker for it). Still, Tali misses the quiet, misses her friends, even misses the Mako. Everything weighs against itself: She’d do it again; the commander is dead. She’s returned home; her friends are falling apart. she tries to remember Shepard; she tries to move on, and on it goes. So many debts unpaid, and the months turn over and as she reassembles the present from the past, she finds herself grateful, more than anything. Grateful for having known Shepard, for having known each member of the crew, for their acceptance of a young quarian who had so much to learn.

-

It's all Liara thinks about. it’s all Liara tries not to think about. There’s a divide somewhere deep in her that she knows is going to pull tear apart one way or another, there is a voice that sounds like Shepard telling her to get up and then there is the present. She refuses to let go, she refuses to equate the flash of light in the sky with the woman she loved. The wreckage had streaked through the sky, unfairly and ruthlessly beautiful and it hurts and it burns and if this is love she’s not sure she wants it. The commander changes her and changes her again, and If Liara was ever anything else she no longer recognises it. Even in death Shepard is a horizon liara can’t help but reach for; a beacon, a love that splits her wide. The hope (and even that, she owes to Shepard) sticks at the back of her throat, almost as badly as the desperation. 

Digging is Liara’s speciality, and she gets to work straight away, refusing to acknowledge any other alternative. And it's a close thing when she does find it (she never truly believed she would) - between finding the body and Cerberus contacting her, and Liara cannot help but wonder if this was orchestrated. The anger swells, but closer and sweeter is relief, and she would give up more to Cerberus than they ask for if it meant living in a reality where Shepard would and could be brought back.

Shepard was the woman always larger than life, and hopefully, Liara thinks, larger than death itself.


End file.
